


Mind Games

by pangaeaseas



Series: Method in the madness [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Arithmancy, BAMF Ginny Weasley, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Canon Compliant, Deception, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Legilimency (Harry Potter), Morally Ambiguous Character, Occlumency (Harry Potter), Quidditch, Worldbuilding, mind magic, mind magic is not a toy, tiny little hints of one-sided drarry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29011005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pangaeaseas/pseuds/pangaeaseas
Summary: How Draco Malfoy got the worst headache of his life.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy & Ginny Weasley, Draco Malfoy & Lord Voldemort, Draco Malfoy & Severus Snape
Series: Method in the madness [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2128269
Kudos: 19





	Mind Games

**Author's Note:**

> I condemn J.K. Rowling's transphobic, inaccurate statements.
> 
> This is somewhat different from my usual work. It has a companion/ prequel, this one is meant to be read first.
> 
> Draco Malfoy in DH is fun to explore- all the regret and guilt! the terror! the sort of weird middly part of the redemption arc!
> 
> Also, we got very little canon information on Legilimency and Occlumency- this is an exploration of that, hopefully not too confusing.
> 
> Enjoy!

After the first meeting with Snape, he sees her in the Great Hall. Eating treacle tart and talking to Longbottom. Probably plotting some kind of sedition. More posters like those horrid ones, with that girl’s body who used to be a Ravenclaw. It’s bad enough he has to see it outside the castle, he doesn’t have to see it inside too.

Anyway, she’s eating, not looking at him so he can’t see those blue eyes (like that one spell Aunt Bella taught him but no, he’s at school Merlin-damn-it) but Snape said you don’t need eye contact if you’re good enough. Then he proved it. He still has a horrible fucking headache. She’s vulnerable. He doesn’t like the Cruciatus curse, especially when Mother takes it for him, body bent like a lightning-struck tree. 

What in hell does Ginny Weasley know of war? Probably thinks it’s like a Quidditch game or something, just like her boyfriend. So. So. She hexed him once. And he’s having trouble doing Occlumency on himself, keeps having nightmares. And the Dark Lord is mad about Merlin knows what, and he doesn’t like what happens when the Dark Lord gets mad.

“ _Legilimens,”_ he murmurs, too quiet for Pansy to hear him under her loud monologue about the dirty blood traitor fifth-year who pretended a mudblood was her cousin. He points directly at her, lets his wand dig into his hand. Red hair. Skin. Skull. Merlin, bones look weird from the outside. Then, a broomstick. Air whipping through him, light and free. He’s almost dizzy with it. 

She really only thinks about Quidditch, doesn’t she?

The Gryffindor Quidditch team is talking, nervous hidden tones everyone but Pansy and Crabbe and Goyle (and him, he supposes, but Occlumency!) seems to use. They are, apparently, planning how not to get killed. 

Suddenly, he’s on a broom. A Cleansweep, cheap dirty thing, he can’t see what make. She’s playing Chaser, Quaffle in arm. He scans for the Snitch. Snape had told him about mindscapes, how a Legilimens can be forced into a memory and how to manipulate the memory to his own ends. Snape had told him, “I want you to find out whether or not Ginny Weasley has ever cast an Unforgivable Curse.” (He’s pretty sure it’s no, anyway. This is meant to be an easy exercise and anyway he can’t imagine her with Crucio light on her lips, she’s too goody-goody, not like people who _aren’t_ him) So the Snitch must be the answer he’s looking for. He has to find it! But Potter was always a better Seeker. Even she was always a better Seeker.

When he falls from his broomstick and jolts back to the Great Hall, out of Ginny Weasley’s head, he doesn’t wonder where in hell Ginny Weasley, who is not an Occlumens, learned to make a mindscape.

***

“Has Ginny Weasley ever cast an Unforgivable Curse?” Snape asks him, cool uncaring tone at their next Legilimency lesson.

“I don’t know yet, sir,” he says, and tries to brace himself. Snape doesn’t curse him, but his lip curls.

“This is a beginner’s exercise, Malfoy. Surely you are not such an utter dunderhead that you cannot retrieve information from the untrained mind of a weak child?”

“I couldn’t find anything about Unforgivables,” he says. It’s true. “She only thinks about Quidditch.”

“Surely, Miss Weasley at least finds room in her head to consider her classwork- she seems to especially enjoy Arithmancy- or her activities with Longbottom and Lovegood, or,” and somehow his sneer deepens, “Mr. Potter.”

“I don’t know,” he says, though honestly he hadn’t pressed for anything on Potter, though he could have. Potter plays Quidditch, therefore Quidditch provides a mental pathway to Potter that he can follow. Or at least that’s what the book Snape gave him says. (He does not want to see Potter naked with Ginny Weasley, but he’s not going to unpack that now.)

Snape raises an eyebrow. Occlumency, Occlumency, Occlumency, and he’s safe, except when his own thoughts betray him to himself.

***

Next time she’s in detention. He’s supervising, the Carrows are stretched too thin with all the rebelling. It’s a perfect opportunity. Too perfect, says something sour in his gut, but he’s used to ignoring stomachaches. 

“What are you going to do to me, Malfoy?” she says. “Cruciatus? I hear you’re good at it. Con-fucking-grats. Daddy darling must be proud.” He hates her, bursts of angry sunlight in his brain, in that moment. Hates hates hates hate for Ginny Weasley heavy inside him. He points his wand at her and screams _Legilimens!_ inside his mind. 

He’s on a broomstick again. It must be the same game. He hears her calculating point totals. Projection, he recalls, thoughts in memory must be distinguished from projection. Or so said Snape’s book. He’s almost certain she’s thinking, or remembering what she was thinking, though it’s hard to be certain with Legilimency. Apparently, she’ll be using this game for her Arithmancy homework. 

He scans for the Snitch, screams _Unforgivables!_ into her mind, searching for a reaction. There is none. He flies closer to her, tries to block her from scoring a goal, and finds himself slipping from his broomstick. Blackness approaches, apparently what happens in the absence of thought. He comes to, or however, on a practice field. There is a Snitch next to him. He grabs for it, but it slips right out of his fingers.

What are you looking for, he asks himself. (It sounds like Ginny Weasley.) He is looking for the Unforgivables. She is flying above the field, and he feels her sense of peace. Crashes over him like a wave at the beach. For a moment, he allows himself guilt. 

How to disturb peace? A girl like Ginny Weasley would never cast Unforgivables, the thought would torment her. (He knows torment too well.) Unforgivables! Unforgivables! He finds himself riding behind her on her old broom, seeing its cracks. Oddly, it looks like a Firebolt. He chases her, goes deeper into her mind. He finds her practicing spells in an empty classroom. He finds her writing in a diary. 

He finds himself on the floor, Ginny Weasley having walked out of her detention. He still has no idea whether the three fatal curses have ever crossed her lips like Potter’s wet tongue.

***

“Mr. Malfoy is… progressing… in his Legilimency instruction, my Lord.”

***

The third and last time Draco Malfoy uses Legilimency on Ginny Weasley, it’s in the library. The library is supposed to be neutral ground in this schoolkid war, but he’s a highly evolved pureblood and thus beyond guilt and petty things like morality. (Using Occlumency on himself has started to work, at least somewhat.) She’s reading, something about the five laws of Arithmancy. He has no idea why anyone would read such a thing. 

After the previous time, he’s made a new plan of, well, attack. He should probably call it what it is. He likes to think of Legilimency as a Quidditch game, but it’s a war. Even Ginny Weasley probably knows that. See, what happened last time was that he’s not very good at nonverbal magic, and that he was looking at her which should make it easier but actually made it harder. Thus, he has to try it when she’s unaware, like the first time.

“ _Legilimens,”_ he whispers, trying to make himself inconspicuous, and he’s inside her mind.

It’s yet another Quidditch game. Honestly, the girl has a disturbing degree of obsession. Just like her precious boyfriend. And, once again, he can’t find the stupid Snitch. This isn’t even real Quidditch and he’s still shit at it. This is a mindscape, or a memory, he’s not sure which. She’s flying towards him.

“Better dodge, Malfoy,” she says, entirely inside her mind. She must have recognized his intrusion, but surely she will have no way of countering it. “If you can even fly well enough.”

“I’m a great flyer,” he says, and is surprised to hear himself saying it out loud. 

“You want to know whether or not I’ve cast Unforgivables,” she says. Not out loud. In the real world, she is studying Arithmancy. “That’s my favorite class.”

He gets an image, sudden as a flood, of her in an Arithmancy classroom, answering Professor Vector’s questions, the warm feeling of pride when she earns ten points for Gryffindor. Good. He’s getting somewhere.

He chases the feeling of practice, of pride.

“What? That what you feel, everytime you torture for Tommy-boy? Like some pet for him, winning points in your fucked-up Death Eater games?”

“Shut up. Who’s the Legilimens here?” he tells her. Good. It wasn’t out loud this time. He concentrates on her image of the Quidditch pitch. She scores, and he follows an association to a memory of her practicing a spell.

“Practice anything else?” he asks. Flying above him, she smirks.

“Want to see?”

Suddenly, he’s in an empty classroom, watching her mouth move on Harry Potter’s, and the flash of jealousy and lust that moves through him (like lightning, like a lightning-bolt scar) when he sees Potter’s naked chest. So that rumor about the tattoo was true, but he feels as if his broom’s acting up, off balance.

They flash back to the pitch and then, before he can breathe, he’s seeing her in an empty classroom. The same one, even. There’s a book in her hands, one he recognizes. How the hell did she get a pass to the Restricted Section? And then, he sees the rat. She caught it on the grounds, he finds, prying at the memory. It reminds her of Scabbers (he shudders at the memory of Wormtail). She doesn’t feel guilty, as she raises her wand, as she whispers “ _Crucio”,_ and for a moment, he is somehow jealous.

He has his answer, and doesn’t like it.

And then he’s in the same classroom, same book, same rat. He hears her considering, dithering, and he sees her put her wand away, hears no curse fall from her lips. 

He comes to on the floor of the library. Ginny Weasley is gone, and his head is splitting open, two sets of memories warring for dominance inside his head. 

He faints, pain too overwhelming for Occlumency, wakes up in Snape’s quarters and pukes several times into a wastebasket the headmaster conjures for him. Whenever he thinks of that classroom, a fresh angry jolt of pain runs through his head. His mind can’t bear the two sets of contradicting memories. 

“Pain potion, please, professor,” he begs, clutching the rim of the wastebasket. “Please, my head is exploding, I can’t, I can’t.” Snape gives him a potion so string it knocks him out. He dreams of playing Quidditch with Ginny Weasley, and wakes up with the headache roaring back to life, pain almost Cruciatus-level.

Later, Snape tells him it lasted several days.

“I am… sorry, Mr. Malfoy,” he says, maybe even genuinely regretful but then Snape is an excellent Occulmens. “I gave you the assignment with Miss Weasley knowing she had some rudimentary Occlumency. I did not realize how advanced her skills were.”

“Fuck off,” he says, as another wave of pain destroys his mind. This, he’s certain, is the worst thing he’s ever felt. Damn Snape. Damn Weasley. Damn the Unforgivables, hell, damn the Dark Lord.

He does not attend another Legilimency lesson.

***

It isn’t until several weeks later that he realizes Ginevra Molly Weasley has never taken an Arithmancy class in her life.

**Author's Note:**

> All canonical errors are the result of my unreliable narrator :P
> 
> As for how Ginny got so good at Occlumency, well, she's still traumatized from CoS and Occlumency helps protect against possession, so she studied it on her own so that she'll never lose her agency and the sanctity of her mind like that again.
> 
> As for whether or not she's cast Unforgivables, I think not, but you can draw your own conclusions.


End file.
